In general, there appears to be an ever increasing demand placed on the continuous web printing press industry to supply more versatile rotary printing presses having multiple print head stations. The stations in these printing presses are often in a spaced apart and fixed relation to one another. One problem with present rotary printing presses having multiple print head stations is that each station is dedicated to a particular type of printing, for example, flexographic printing, rotary screen printing, offset printing, etc. It is often desirable with such a multiple station printing press, for example, a flexographic printing press, to have a non-flexographic printing operation performed at one or more of the printing press stations.
There are multiple station rotary printing presses presently available today which utilize a combination of printing operations, for example, flexographic and rotary screen. However, each station is still dedicated to only one type of printing. It is often desirable to vary, from one printing job to another, the sequence in which the different types of printing are performed. However, the time, effort, and expense involved in rededicating one or more of the print head stations of such printing presses has often been, heretofore, cost prohibitive.